Musings from the cloud

A Growing Cloud Market, the New Competitive Cocktail, and a Prescription for Success

by Kellie Green, Vice President of Support, Parallels

As our Parallels SMB Cloud Insights™ reports show, the cloud services market is growing rapidly, aggressively, and broadly. Each year, your customers report using more cloud services, with plans to add more in the near future. And global sales of cloud services are advancing strongly across all sectors and geographies.

But, for many hosting and cloud service providers, this rising tide is simply not raising all boats equally. New sales to existing customers are rising slowly, if at all, and it’s getting harder to attract new customers with the traditional “good, better, best” web hosting approach that worked in the past.

So, the question is, how’s it going for you?

Is your business growing as fast or faster than the overall market?

Are all segments of your business growing strongly year over year?

Are your existing customers buying more cloud services from you?

And, do you know who your real competition is and what they’re up to?

If you can answer a strong “yes” to each of these questions, we say “congratulations!”

But, if you can’t answer “yes” to each of the questions above, you’re not alone. In fact, recent Parallels research indicates several disturbing trends that should concern us all:

Customers report high satisfaction with their current service providers, while expressing little interest in buying additional services from those same providers.

New entrants to the cloud services market report dazzling gains, while many service providers are seeing their sales plateau.

The following series of posts will focus on the specific issues that are facing your business:

Customer Loyalty – why it may not mean what you think it does

The New Competitive Cocktail – why it may be a potent mix for some

Today’s Buyer – what you need to know about their behavior patterns

The Prescription For Success – research results indicating actions that will deliver the greatest results

Want to find out how you can take advantage of detailed, researched market analysis to make strategic directional changes for your business? Stay tuned for the rest of this informative blog series over the next several weeks and register now for our upcoming webinar on August 12, "Loyalty, Satisfaction and the Next Sale: What Matters Most to Existing Customers."